The Basement Monster
by Demeter1
Summary: Thirty years and one coffin. Vincent Valentine looks for redemption.


**"The Basement Monster"**

**Demeter**

**Disclaimer:** All rights and privileges of Final Fantasy VII characters, objects and plots are property and trademarks of Square-Enix, Sony and associated parties. The author claims no legal responsibility for problems associated with using this work. The original story, relationships, and characters found within the fic are property of the author Demeter.

**Series:** Final Fantasy VII

**Rating:** PG13

**Characters:** Mostly Vincent; Lucrecia, Hojo, Godo, Yuffie.

**Notes:** Vaguely off-canon. The words of Vincent upon meeting Yuffie plague me with impossibilities. Timeline might be in need of inspection.

**Warnings:** Assumes the reader knows about the interaction between Vincent and Yuffie.

* * *

Time passes like he's sleeping beneath the ocean, nothing but black and strangely shaped aquatic life and the glimmer of emerald green here and there. He has no memory of anything other than the bright, insolent colors of the dreams that bother him with their feather-light reminders and the slow skippity-skip nightmares he knows should be a form of retribution, but he is searching for penance (one of them?). They whisk in and out like a well-kept maid and memories boil over to simmer on the bottom of his eyelids. He sees -

_the blue waves dance and flicker in the opening of sunrise. Two children run through the sticky sand, splashing all the way and he's careful, very careful._

_it would be a beautiful day._

The picture shifts, drifts like a cloud blown by a cold wind.

Vincent dreams because there is nothing else to do and his dreams fade into nightmares because the Turk (ex?) tortures himself over history that wasn't his and sins that weren't his doing; it must be the old ninja in him, taking all the blame when the lord falls. But he isn't one to appreciate semantics or the fact that Lucrecia would never think to accuse him of anything.

He sighs. The breath flutters dust and nonsense and he remembers -

_"She's the one I'll marry, Valentine."_

_Laughter rang, deep and reminiscent of mountains. He looks at the baby in the crib. "She's a little young."_

_"No, she's perfect. We'll get married and have ten heirs who will live peaceably among each other. I'll lead Wutai to glory and she'll raise them all to be warriors!"_

_"Even the girls?"_

_"Especially the girls. I'm not going to let just any second-rate ninja have a daughter of __**mine.**__" The prepubescent boy looks ridiculous with his chest all puffed out._

_"Your daughter will probably end up looking like you."_

_Pause. "No... she'll look exactly like her mother."_

_"And what shall her mother look like?"_

_He scoffs. "Like Sayuri of course." The baby gurgles._

_"Ah."_

Wutai is like tea, steeped in tradition and myth and filled with floating leaves of honor and vying clans. Wutai is not perfect, but perfection is a waste of space; the Kisaragi Clan has ruled for over two centuries. There is no sign, no need for an end. The Pagoda stands proudly in the shadow of Da-Chao and blessed be Leviathan, great Bringer of fortune, green bean cakes and polished metal from the very secret caves. Bless Leviathan for power and peace. Wutai flourishes, Wutai -

_"Wutai is going to be the strongest nation in the world!"_

_"Mm, if Wutai and Shinra allied themselves, they would be a force unstoppable-"_

_Godo cuts him off. "Not true! Wutai is as powerful as Shinra, if not more! We will gain our own power and stand proudly against Shinra!"_

_"Hey, __**I'm**__ going to Shinra."_

_"... right. You're leaving soon." Godo visibly deflates._

_"To join the Turks; I think that would suit me very well." He ignores the disappointment in his charge's eyes. _

The Turks suit him, suit him far better than he'd ever imagined and the disturbance is merely one, two sneezes that comes from his gleaming quarters deep inside the bowels of Shinra. His job is not all that different from what he does in Wutai; glorious Wutai where an elite assassin can camouflage as a babysitter and vice-versa. Vincent lives with garrotes and diapers, poison and formula, ninjutsu and poker.

Godo never knows.

_"Dunno, their job description sounds kind of boring."_

_"They're personal bodyguards to the Shinra elite; doesn't that sound familiar?"_

_"Noooo..."_

_"I was your babysitter."_

_"Hey! I wasn't a baby!"_

_"Close enough."_

_"You take that back, Valentine!"_

He remembers pictures, photos of a traditional Wutaian wedding. He remembers angry letters and a misplaced obsession that shoots everything and everyone else in the face and he buries the evidence. Then there is no need because Shinra (ambitious, controlling Shinra) wants Wutai's power and promise and Wutai is ever too proud to step back from Shinra's eventual monopoly. There is no doubt.

He erases his past.

It's simple. He now needs to bring that back. Atonement?

But...

_"Stop it, Vincent."_

_"I'm not going to let you do this, Lucrecia; he doesn't deserve you."_

_An irritable hand, pale and long-fingered, perfect for the labs and her soulless work. "You just don't understand, do you? This is the chance we've been waiting for! Where else do you believe the project would find a viable fetus?"_

_He shakes his head. "Not one from you."_

_"I'm a scientist and this is the possibility of a lifetime." She pats his hand in fond exasperation and agitation. "This is for the best, Vincent. Hojo and I understand each other and about what is needed."_

_Better than even him? But Vincent is a Turk so he leaves that unsaid._

Nothing he does can stop her, but he should have tried harder. He should have stopped her from injecting her own child with the cells of the alien, of the enemy, of Jenova. But Lucrecia has her own hopes, her own dreams, her own beliefs. Vincent Valentine wasn't enough for her and he doubts he ever was.

She laughs like the belly-up sun and Hojo smiles into the microscope.

_The scream of a newborn baby cracks the silence of the mansion like imperfect glass; there is too little else living among molding stone and malicious ghosts._

Blood drips slow and steady from the table and Hojo tries too hard to staunch the scarlet flow from a body that bore the next Planet killer. The fine fragile too-thin threads are broken and it's the toss of blue beaded glass from Godo's window and the image of Sayuri's hands on her hips and calling him a coward after he refuses to play hide-and-seek with her.

_Lucrecia is all fever and she asks for her baby, yes her baby, not the experiment, not the fetus, but her __**baby**__ and Vincent is all chilled frustration as he ransacks the mansion for the child and he finds himself being shot shot shot (it's fucking hilarious because he's being shot by one of his spare guns and by hands that have never held a gun before and just how did Hojo manage that while holding a squalling sticky newborn in one arm?)_

An unholy shriek. The clank of heavy metal. The costume of Hojo's own private joke.

The days swim in and out and the next time he awakes, he knows as well as the sun sets that Lucrecia is dead and he's failed.

Darkness greets him and there's a voice, many voices, and like a misused carousal, they vie for his sanity; Chaos, one self-identifies and the demon cackles in pleasure born from stinky gouda cheese and Vincent never knows why the Chaos likes maggoty food so much. The monster sets out complicated card games and makes Vincent play as much as possible; they bet everything and they lose everything. Chaos is too gleeful to care and Vincent is too guilty to know.

It taunts and spins mockeries of his love for Lucrecia.

_Lucrecia hates him for failing._

Lucrecia bore him a child (no child, no, no child of Hojo's could ever be his?)

_Lucrecia never knew -_

Lucrecia was -

_Godo throws a little girl into the air and he roars with laughter after she sticks her tongue out at him. He roars less when she throws a shuriken at his kneecap but the gossamer strands of happiness are thick with peace and strength and Sayuri smiles like she never needed to outgrow that baby doll with knees roughed up by sand and who happily called Vincent Valentine a coward. _

A little girl who would never marry a second-rate ninja and would know all the fine arts of the ninja way.

It would be a little girl who had her mother's looks and her father's obstinacy, her mother's skill and her father's tea habits and the little girl would never know sorrow would never know death but –

_Wutai burns. Godo commands an army but the fields of the dead widen and a silver-haired general triumphs. Sayuri throws her stars, her blades, her beautiful senbon, and finally, her pride (her head bends into the bloody dirt with naked tufts of charred grass and she begs with all the nobility she'd ever had, she begs with the faith of a mother, begs with the strength of her love) and Sephiroth grants life to the only heir left on the throne. He draws his wicked sword and like the great big bad in stories told of old, the blade swings and the head flies graceful and all twitchy-like over a little girl's memory and seals her fate as sure as five years in the blender -_

The little girl is no more and a woman stands in her place, only not, because she has yet to learn what the difference is between stealing and being caught stealing.

She is beautiful.

_She is young._

Her gray eyes are Sayuri and Godo dies on the battlefield. He has lost all his sons, he has lost his wife, and he has lost his truth.

**_"I will lead Wutai to glory!"_**

A spiral. It all leads back to him. His sins that have caused the fall of Wutai. His fault for the motherless child (two motherless children) he has done nothing and Vincent Valentine warrants the passing of time and the fall of a thousand lives (and beyond) as he slumbers. He searches for penance. More than one red moon crosses the sky.

_He remembers Lucrecia and the mousy brown hair she hates._

The not-so-little girl shears her hair into a short bob and nods at the mirror. There are no tears.

_Lucrecia hides her brilliant eyes behind thick spectacles and the world reflects like madness._

"I will lead Wutai to glory old man!"

Gray eyes burn in fury and Godo closes his eyes to memories and the past and reconciliation. She in turn runs from her place, her homeland, and the eyes light up with life and curiosity and more than once she sticks her hand too far into the frying pan.

Oil spills onto dirt and grass and all over the world.

Does he dream...?

**("I will lead Wutai to glory!")**

Lucrecia looks softly into Hojo's eyes and the greasy darkness fades.

_"You're a coward, Vincent Valentine!"_

The words are true and they ring so strongly Lucrecia looks up from Hojo's embrace and turns to look at him, the silent standing wraith who does his duty, Turk duty, and he will guard the two on their jaunt toward fame and complete scientific freedom (monster!). Her eyes beg for understanding and he _doesn't_ understand and really, why should he? But, oh no, it's his fault, it's his sin, she was savaged at the hands of Hojo, really, Lucrecia was the victim in all this -

_a boy with hair as beautiful as the shining caves of mythril and he was weeping because all the shots and tests and loneliness hurts and he couldn't ask for any help because no one could play and no one had time and the only person who ever looked at him straight was Hojo and that was because he was useful and_

- she lost her life and her work because of the manic madness that was Hojo. Hojo, Hojo, evil, filth, destroyer of lives (monster!) in human skin, he is the cause of -

_the girl's tears, the same grief, her hands wet with her mother's blood as she tries to wake Sayuri up and the look of silver so magnificent and so wretched and the blade, the general turns away and she would never see him break the neck of one of his officers for their suggestion of rapin Wutai._

Never Lucrecia. It was...

Lucrecia and Sephiroth and the daughter of Godo and was this one of his many dreams? His nightmares? Chaos enjoys his solitude and suffering, laps it like a cat from a saucer of heavy cream, savors the flavor - dark, syrupy, tastes of finely chilled dust - as if a connoisseur of rare wines.

_I remember._

But he doesn't.

He waits too long and the darkness rumbles and shakes and hazy, filtered light streams in and his voice is far too rusty from thirty years of disuse. It echoes and booms and asks for the reason behind his disturbance. The voice is not his own. Vincent Valentine's voice died thirty years ago and the new voice is quiet and stern and monotone; he looks for a new identity.

They're no one, he does not know them, but they heap more sins upon him, they bury him in guilt and self-hatred because Sephiroth has gone mad, the sullen little boy of Lucrecia went mad and -

_he never should have allowed Lucrecia to inject her unborn child with Jenova cells, he should have shot her right then and there, he should have suffocated that child even as Hojo performed his madness, he should have killed __**Hojo**_

Nibelhiem, destroyed. Wutai, destroyed. Midgar, city born of false hopes and greedy intentions, erected, terrifying. The miners of Kalm, the dying chocobos, the loss of condors, the fouling of watery grave Junon, the madness of Corel, the loss of space, it is all his fault, Valentine's fault, he deserves death and torture and Vincent Valentine is the origin of the planet killer.

_Lucrecia's baby wails and he will tear the child (her child) apart_

His toes dip onto dirt and the claws climb through wood and stone and it smells like fresh air greeting him, so new he almost turns back to the mansion, he has hid too long, it is like a poison of unfettered joy and he has no right to gossamer fine strands of peace and strength and when they enter the forest, he finds...

_A little girl who would never marry a second-rate ninja and would know all the fine arts of the ninja way._

**"I will bring the world's best materia back, old man and _I'll_ lead Wutai to glory!"**

_"She has a mysterious weapon... I've seen her somewhere before..."_

Chaos frowns.

_Godo throws a little girl into the air_

_She is young. And she is strong. _

Vincent Valentine has found his penance.

(only one of them, but to see Sayuri's eyes glare back and Godo's chin jut out in obstinacy, the little girl of all angles and skinny fire, it's enough to know his coffin didn't stop time.)

**- fin -**

All hail constructive criticism!


End file.
